Innovative, “multi-load” garages that provide access from the front street and rear alleys will take center stage in new homes Brookfield Residential will start constructing this week in its Brighton Crossing community.

Brookfield Residential inherited the 730-acre community in Brighton in 2011, when its parent company bought the original developer, Carma Developer, in 2011. D.R. Horton already is building homes at Brighton Crossing, near Bridge Street, 50th Avenue and Interstate 76, about 25 minutes from downtown Denver. The first models are scheduled to available for viewing in March. Brighton Crossing is a hot market, according to an analysis by COhomefinder.

Most recently, Brookfield Residential has had great success with constructing affordable and super-energy efficient homes in its Midtown at Clear Creek community in unincorporated Adams County, minutes from some of Denver’s trendy neighborhoods, such as Berkeley, West Highland and Sunnyside.

Brookfield apparently is the first builder to offer what are sometimes called “multi-load” garages, said Jim Van Gelder, marketing and sales director for the company.

“Years ago, some homes in Denver may have had them, but we do not know of any builder in Denver that currently offers them,” Van Gelder said.

The beauty of them that they are more efficient than a traditional suburban “front loaded” garage, allowing more usable living space in the home, he said.

Indeed, he estimated a typical home will gain approximately an additional 200 square feet of living space, which is a substantial increase from homes whose base models have 1,622-square-feet to 1,997 square feet. (Options are available that can boost the size up to about 2,300 square feet.)

The homes will be priced from $257,880 to $294,880. The multi-load nature of the garage, means rather than designing the floor plan in an “L” shape that wraps around the garage, architects have the flexibility to create living space (in both one and two-story homes that provide a more efficient allocation to a kitchen, great room and storage areas.

“You have more flexibility than with an L-shaped space, and we use it to bring in a lot of natural light,” said Marni Shwartz, marketing manager at the community.

At the same time, the garages typically will be as big, if not slightly larger than a typical garage providing space for toys such as ATVs and jet skis that Brookfield expects a lot of the buyers seeking the bucolic Brighton lifestyle to own.

Because the lots are deeper than a typical suburban lot, “we will have good-sized backyards,” Van Gelder said.

He said the drive through garage concept was the brain child of Perry Cadman, general manager at Brookfield Residential.

“Perry was looking at the layout and realized that since we have alleys, we should take advantage of them by offering more than one access point,” Van Gelder said.

Van Gelder predicted they will be a huge selling point.

“Some of these homes you will be able to have four-car garages,” he said. “That is pretty important.”

The alleys themselves are an urban feature in a suburban environment.

“That’s why we are going to be offering what we call the Urban Farmhouse design,” Van Gelder said.

“It will have things like a wrap-around porch,” he said.

The Urban Farmhouse design features board-and-batten siding (long, thin pieces of material covering the seams, both horizontally and vertically), with roof pitches to compliment the architectural style. Six different floor plans will be offered.

While the houses will not have all of the energy features at Midtown — for example, they won’t be offering the Passive House at Brighton Crossing — while the first one in the state is in Midtown, they will still have many green features and will be more energy efficient and sustainable than most production homes in this price range, he said.

Brookfield Residential also will continue what it calls its “Home Evolved” concept, which is to be on the cutting edge of of building science in terms of energy efficiency, creative features that will try to address today what the future might bring.

“We have things in our communities like our ‘wall of windows’ to bring in natural light and very open floor plans where you kind of float from room to room,” Shwartz said.

It also can include little things, such as allowing space for hooks in bathrooms, so it is easier to hang towels.

“Instead of just building a box, we want to think outside of the box,” Shwartz said.